the Baltic." His later poems were comparative failures, particularly"Theodric," in 1824, and "The Pilgrim of Glencoe," in 1842. His prose writings are numerous, and include "Letters" descriptive of travel, Lives of Mrs. Siddons and of Petrarch, together with histories, and essays in literary criticism.

8. Another poet whose work began in the eighteenth century and was continued during the larger part of the nineteenth was Walter Savage Landor. He was born in 1775, and died in 1864, and, like Rogers, inherited great wealth. He was a man of genius, and of great cultivation, particularly in the ancient classics; but he had a violent temper, and was often overbearing and vindictive. His first publication was a small volume of poems in 1795; next came a long poem, "Gebir,” in 1798; and next, "Count Julian," a tragedy, in 1812. The latter brought him literary distinction. Between 1824 and 1829, he published his most celebrated work, "Imaginary Conversations," five volumes, prose. In 1836, he published "A Satire on Satirists and Detractors; in 1839, his dramas, "Andrea of Hungary" and "Giovanna of Naples; " in 1847, "Hellenics; " in 1853, "The Last Fruit of an Old Tree;" in 1854, "Letters of an American; and in 1858, "Dry Sticks Fagoted." He also made frequent contributions to the newspapers. A complete edition of his works has been published in seven volumes.

9. Thomas Moore was born in Dublin in 1779. He died in England in 1852. After graduating at Trinity College, Dublin, in 1799 he entered upon the study of law in London. In 1800, he won his first literary success, and his literary nickname, by publishing a translation of the odes of Anacreon. In 1801, he published a volume of original poems, under the assumed name of Thomas Little. Having made a brief tour in the United States, he published, in 1806, his "Epistles, Odes, and Other Poems," founded upon his experience in America. From this time forward, his writings in prose and verse were a multitude. His most important publications are "Irish Melodies," "Sacred Songs," "National Airs," "Lalla Rookh," "The Fudge Family in Paris," "Life of Sheridan," and "Life of Lord Byron."

10. The poets thus far mentioned in this chapter were all in the field, when, in 1809, room was suddenly made among them for a young poet, George Gordon, Lord Byron, who published that year his "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.'' He was born in London in 1788. He received his principal education at Harrow and at Cambridge; and in 1807 published his first volume of poems," Hours of Idleness; " by the contemptuous review of which in "The Edinburgh Review," Byron was goaded to the composition of the powerful satire above mentioned. In June, 1809, he started upon a long journey in the East and in Albania he began the composition of "Childe Harold," of which the first two cantos were published in 1812, and brought to Byron the highest contemporary fame. During the remainder of his life, his pen had little rest. In 1813 came "The Giaour;" followed by "The Bride of Abydos," "The Corsair," and "Lara." In 1816, he published "The Siege of Corinth," and "Parisina." In 1816, having separated from his wife, and incurred great public odium, he left England, never to return; and died in Greece in 1824. During these eight years, he added to " Childe Harold," wrote "The Prisoner of Chillon," Manfred," "Beppo," "Mazeppa," "Don Juan," Marino Faliero," "Sardanapalus," "Cain," "The Vision of Judgment," and many other works.

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11. Percy Bysshe Shelley, of an ancient and wealthy family, was born in 1792, and died by drowning in 1822. He began writing when very young. In 1810, he published “Zastrozzi," likewise, "St. Irvyne; or, the Rosicrucian," both romances in prose. At the age of eighteen, he was expelled from the University of Oxford for publishing a pamphlet on "The Necessity of Atheism." He soon became acquainted with Southey, De Quincey, Leigh Hunt, Godwin, Byron, Keats, and other men of letters. In 1813, he published Queen Mab;" and subsequently he wrote "Alastor; or, the Spirit of Solitude," "The Revolt of Islam," "Prometheus Unbound," "The Cenci," " Adonais," Hellas," "The Cloud," "The Sensitive Plant," and "To the Skylark." A complete edition of his works, in four volumes, was published in 1875.

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12. John Keats was born in London, probably in 1796.

He was

He was without worldly fortune, or the opportunity of high education. He had little Latin, and no Greek at all. apprenticed to a surgeon. In 1818, he published" Endymion," with other poems; and the volume was so fiercely abused by some of the reviewers, that his early death is sometimes said to have been hastened by the shock thus given to him. His health was rapidly declining by consumption; and in 1820, he was obliged to go to Italy for a gentler climate. He died in Rome in the following year. Before leaving England, he published several exquisite and splendid poems, particularly "Hyperion," "Lamia," "The Eve of St. Agnes," and "Ode to the Nightingale." He dictated the epitaph upon his tomb: "Here lies one whose name was writ in water." The dying poet seems not to have dreamed of the great and imperishable renown that was to preserve his name from dying.

13. We must group into smaller space our record of the other poets belonging to this glorious, creative era of English literature. Robert Bloomfield (1766-1823), an apprentice to a farmer, and without helps to education, wrote "The Farmer's Boy," "Wild Flowers," "Rural Tales," "The Banks of the Wye," "Songs and Ballads," etc., the first two of which once had great popularity. William Lisle Bowles (1762– 1850) was a learned antiquary, and a prolific writer both of prose and verse. His most memorable work is his "Sonnets," a form of verse in which he greatly excelled. Mary Tighe (1774–1810) published in 1805 a poem called "Psyche," which was much read. James Montgomery (1771-1854), a journalist, acquired wide popular recognition by his hymns, and by several long poems, particularly "The Wanderer of Switzerland," "The West Indies," "The World before the Flood," and "Greenland." Robert Montgomery (1807–55), a clergyman, wrote long pietistic poems on "The Omnipresence of the Deity," "The Messiah," and "Satan." His reputation is now chiefly derived from Macaulay's contemptuous essay on his poetry. Henry Kirke White (1785-1806) came to his death from imprudent devotion to study at Cambridge; and had great posthumous reputation on account of the publication of his verses and prose essays, edited by Southey. Reginald Heber (17831826) wrote, besides sermons and books of travel, "Poems and Translations," 1812; and "Hymns," 1827. Some of the Jatter will last as long as our language lasts. Felicia Hemans (1794-1835) wrote "Dartmoor," "Siege of Valencia," "Songs of the Cid," "Lays of Many Lands," "Songs of the Affections," etc. James Hogg (1770 or 17721835), known as "the Ettrick Shepherd," was a self-trained writer, and published, in 1807, "The Mountain Bard;" in 1810, "The Forest Min

strel;" and in 1813, "The Queen's Wake." He is a prominent personage in "Noctes Ambrosianæ." Thomas Lovell Beddoes (1803-49) wrote "The Bride's Tragedy," "The Improvisatore," "Death's Jest Book," "Dramatic Scenes and Fragments." John Keble (1792-1866) wrote "The Christian Year," which has probably been published in a hundred editions; also "Lyra Innocentium," and parts of "Lyra Apostolica." Ebenezer Elliott (1781-1849), known as "the Corn-Law Rhymer," won his chief distinction as a writer of passionate and stirring lyrics at a time of great political excitement in England. Hartley Coleridge (1796-1849), eldest son of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, wrote essays for "Blackwood's Magazine," and "Biographia Borealis;" also "Poems," in which the sonnets are of special tenderness and beauty. Arthur Henry Hallam (1811-33), who is forever commemorated in Tennyson's "In Memoriam," wrote both poems and prose essays, which were printed, first, in 1834, and again in 1862. Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802-38) became known by her initials, “L. E. L.," with which she signed her many poems, such as "The Troubadour," "The Venetian Bracelet," "The Golden Violet," and "The Vow of the Peacock."

CHAPTER XVIII.

FIRST HALF OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: NOVELISTS AND DRAMATISTS.

1. Sir Walter Scott.-2. Prominence of the Novel as a Form of Literature. - 3. William Godwin; Maria Edgeworth; Matthew Gregory Lewis; Amelia Opie; Jane Austen; Jane Porter; Anna Maria Porter; Barbara Hofland; Mary Brunton.-4. Mrs. Shelley; James Morier; Thomas Hope; Robert P. Ward; Theodore Hook; Thomas H. Lister; Lady Blessington; Mrs. Trollope; Mary Russell Mitford; G. P. R. James; John Galt; William H. Ainsworth. — 5. Dramatists: Joanna Baillie; Sir Thomas Noon Talfourd; James Sheridan Knowles.-6. Six Greatest Novelists between 1830 and 1850: Captain Marryat; Lord Lytton; Lord Beaconsfield; Charlotte Bronté; Charles Dickens; William Makepeace Thackeray.

1. ENGLISH prose fiction, which, as an influential form of literature, received its first great impulse from the labors of Defoe, of Richardson, and of Fielding, received its second great impulse from the labors of Sir Walter Scott. When his metrical tales had begun to lose their influence before the growing fame of Byron, Scott broke with rhyme, and began, in 1814, with his first novel, "Waverley," to pour out his prose romances. At least one, often two, in a year, appeared for the next seventeen years without intermission, except in the single year 1830. Nowhere in print was Scott so much a poet as in the earlier of his novels. His bright, cheerful fancy, his quick humor, his honest warmth of feeling, which aroused every healthy emotion without stirring a passion, exercised, in these incessantly recurring novels, an influence as gradual, as sure, and as well fitted to its time, as that which had been exercised by Steele and Addison in constantly recurring numbers of the "Tatler" and "Spectator." There was a wide general public now able to fasten upon entertaining volumes. Scott widened it, and purified its taste. In him there was no form of romantic discontent. His world was the same world of genial sympathies, in which we may all live if we will, and do

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